Jamiesfeast – The University of Alabama at Birmingham, which does autopsies for the Alabama Department of Corrections, is also under scrutiny.
According to Singleton’s daughter, all of her father’s organs were removed when his body was returned in 2021. Attorney Lauren Fariano, who is working for the Dotson family, told the outlet that these events point to a worrying trend.
According to Andscape, there is now another case with similar issues. Apparently, 43-year-old black man Kelvin Moore died of a fentanyl accident in Alabama’s Limestone Correctional Facility. Sadly, when Moore’s body was brought to his mother in Mobile, the family mortician found something horrible: all of Moore’s innards had been cut out. Given that Moore died in jail, his body was first sent to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, which does autopsies for the Alabama Department of Corrections.
A lawyer and the Director of Transplant Ethics and Policy Research at NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine, Brendan Parent, said, “The idea that the warden of a prison is authorizing the recovery of bodies and organs without that person’s authorization during their life and without the family’s authorization is a total moral failing and probably a legal failing as well.”
Alabama’s prison system is currently embroiled in federal lawsuits. Both the State of Alabama and its department of corrections are being sued by the Department of Justice. The allegations claim that the conditions in many of the state’s facilities violate the Eighth Amendment, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment. The trial for this case is set to take place in November 2024.
In August 2023, the living conditions of Alabama’s Donaldson Correctional Facility were exposed to the world when a person convicted of murder managed to live stream on Facebook Live from inside the prison. This incident brought attention to the critical state of Alabama’s prison system.
Fariano is a civil rights lawyer from Birmingham who is also looking into Moore’s case. She told Andscape what she knew about it. “There is a pattern of abuse,” Faraino said. Since years ago, UAB has been taking the organs of prisoners without their families’ permission. A few families have come forward to say that their loved ones were returned to them without their organs. But in a lot of these cases, no one knew about them because families don’t usually think they need to do a second autopsy. Many of them would not be able to pay for it, even if they wanted to.
Fariano says that this is more likely to happen to black families. This is because, like the national numbers on mass incarceration, there are too many black people in Alabama’s prisons. Black people make up 56% of Alabama’s jail population, even though they only make up 27% of the state’s population. Fariano tells Andscape that a law passed in 2021 that made it illegal to take organs from people without their permission was clear. “It was very, very clear: the medical examiner can’t take an organ without permission from the family.”
UAB put out a statement saying that it was following the rules. The statement said, “We only do autopsies with permission or consent.” Doctors who hold licenses and approvals from the American Board of Pathology are in charge, and the College of American Pathologists has authorized it. Organs and cells are taken out during an autopsy to best figure out what killed the person. Autopsy approval includes permission for the organs and tissues to be thrown away after the autopsy. To be in line with Alabama law, UAB is one of the places that the State of Alabama asks to do tests on people.
It’s not over for Moore’s family, though. In part because it was Johnnie Moore’s death wish, they won’t give up. Moore’s mom, Agolia Moore, told Andscape that her husband knew something wasn’t right about how their son’s body was given back to them. Agolia remembered what Johnnie had said: “My husband was dying, but he said, ‘Lo.'” What happened to Kelvin is not right. That’s not right. We’re going to do what he said and “stick with it.”